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Cooking-Rut Relief with Sea Cuisine

I’ve been in a bit of a cooking rut lately. Despite my many, many (too many my husband says) cookbooks, countless cooking shows on TV and years of tried and true meal ideas to fall back on, I’m just in a rut. But lately, I’ve been thinking one of the easiest ways to get out of this rut is to start cooking with something I don’t use much – fish. It’s healthy, it can be tasty if prepared right and it broadens my family’s food repertoire.

Just in time, I was invited to meet one of Colorado’s celebrity chef’s, Top Chef winner, Hosea Rosenberg. He was selected to be Colorado’s chef consultant by Sea Cuisine, manufacturers of numerous frozen fish products. We’re not talking fish sticks, but instead, more upscale and way more tasty filets of cod, salmon, tilapia and more.

Recently, Sea Cuisine took to the road with a really impressive, grand food truck, hitting several cities, giving away free fish tacos. In each city, a chef was selected to come up with recipes and to lend a little local star power to the fish-awareness cause.

When I met with Chef Hosea (he prepared his recipe for fish tacos for me – see the recipe below), we talked about encouraging kids to eat more fish, getting them to move beyond just fish sticks (or to try fish for the first time). He suggested starting off with the Potato Crusted Cod in a cheesy potato crust because it’s mild but flavorful. He said kids with more adventurous palettes should try the Tortilla Crusted Tilapia fillets (which he used to make my tacos). They have some oomph but not too much heat. Plus they have a nice crunch and great flavor. But there are a lot of other varieties too, making it easy to test out some different flavors on the kids.

At the grocery store, the packages come with two large fillets ($6.99) and can be cut into strips or bite-size pieces for use in fish tacos or on their own with other sides. Chef Hosea suggested setting up a do-it-yourself fish taco bar, with various fillings. That would be a lot of fun for kids and would give them some say in their own creation, making them more likely to eat it.

If you’re falling into a cooking rut like I am or just want to incorporate fish into your diet, the Sea Cuisine products are a very easy way to do it. They are flash frozen on the boat, immediately after being caught then deglazed at the factory just enough to add the seasonings before being refrozen and sent out to stores. In Colorado, the products are available at Safeway, King Soopers, Super Target and Sams Club.